Arson Suspected In Church Fire

$500,000 Damage At Moody Memorial Building

January 16, 1986|By Bruce Buursma, Religion writer.

A fire believed set by an arsonist destroyed the pulpit, a grand piano and parts of a historic organ Wednesday in Chicago`s Moody Memorial Church, 1609 N. LaSalle St., causing $500,000 damage to one of the largest Protestant auditoriums in the United States.

No injuries were reported in the blaze, which was largely confined to the platform area of the church sanctuary, a 61-year-old oval-shaped brick building with 4,250 seats.

Jerry Lawrence, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman, said investigators from both the fire and police departments ruled the incident to be a burglary and arson.

He said an intruder forced open a dead-bolt on a church door, ransacked two offices and then apparently ignited the fire by pouring a flammable liquid around the pulpit.

The senior pastor of the church, Rev. Erwin Lutzer, said his office and a nearby secretary`s office had been entered, but he declined to specify if any church property had been taken. He said the church has received harassing telephone calls, including one as recently as Tuesday afternoon.

Rev. Lutzer said the auditorium`s public address system, which hangs about 50 feet over the pulpit, also had been destroyed by flames.

The console of the church`s four-manual Reuter organ, built in 1928 at a cost of $32,000, was reduced to ashes, but the 72 ranks of pipes installed in the chancel area appeared undamaged, said Leon Nelson, the church`s associate organist.

A nearby nine-foot Steinway concert grand piano also was a total loss, Nelson said.

Church officials said Wednesday that regular Sunday services would be held this weekend despite the fire and smoke damage.

The pulpit of Moody Church, named for 19th Century Chicago evangelist Dwight L. Moody, has been occupied by many of the most celebrated Christian preachers of the modern era, including evangelists Billy Graham and Billy Sunday, whose funeral service was conducted in the Moody auditorium.

The church traces its origins in the city to 1864, when Moody founded the Illinois Street Independent Church on the Near North Side, a 1,500-seat auditorium that was destroyed seven years later in the Chicago Fire. The congregation was rebuilt and rechristened the North Side Tabernacle after the fire and was renamed in Moody`s honor in 1901, two years after his death.